By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Inside an ambulance moments after fatally shooting a naked Glen Ellyn college student, Officer Jason Bradley began to cry, telling the deputy police chief: “I had to do it -- I had no choice.”
Bradley, now 27 and a state trooper, was responding to a domestic battery call in 2006 at the Iron Gate apartments that he says escalated into a fistfight in which Benjamin Uwumarogie straddled him and repeatedly struck him in the face. The officer drew his weapon and shot the father of two once in the head.
Tuesday marked the second day of a civil trial in the federal wrongful-death lawsuit brought by Uwumarogie’s father, Sunday, principal of Eugene Field Elementary School in Chicago. The family’s attorneys argue the shooting was unjustified.
Bradley said he first tried to restrain Uwumarogie, eventually spraying him five times in the face with pepper spray after the College of DuPage football player, 22, refused to stop.
“He was almost looking right through me. ... I had a gut instinct that something was wrong,” Bradley testified.
Iron Gate property manager Rick Olsen watched through the apartment’s open front door as the two grappled in a narrow hallway.
“He lunged at the police officer, grabbed him by the arms and pushed him back to the bedroom,” he said. “A few seconds later, I heard a shot.”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Tribune